I’ve just got through a fortnight that I’ve been dreading ever since the start of the year.
I’ve got a job that suits me pretty well – I work “back office” and I’m pretty much free to run from my desk whenever I need the bathroom.
Occasionally, though I get pulled into longer meetings and workshops that I can’t avoid, and I get very anxious at the thought of any meeting that goes more than an hour. As long as I know it’s coming I can avoid drinking for a few hours ahead of a meeting and get through an hour-long meeting without a problem. Longer than that, though, and I’m in trouble.
I’ve got an enlarged prostate that stops my bladder emptying properly, and if I get desperate before emptying my bladder (which I often do when I’m holding on during a meeting) I find it really hard to empty out, and I can be desperate again in five or ten minutes. Worse, when my bladder is full or overfull I often get a sudden desperate need to empty, and if I’m not careful (or if I’m just plain unlucky) my pants are wet before I can do anything to stop it happening.
Oh, and the other thing is - I’m desperately shy and full of anxiety around other people. I hate having to stand up and walk out of a meeting just because I can’t hold on any longer. I feel so humiliated by this - and so often I have to do it two or three times before anyone else in the meeting has moved.
So any long meeting is a trial to me. I want to hold on to save myself the shame of not being able to get through the meeting, but I’m afraid to hold on too long in case my bladder overfills and I have to go, and then go again and again. I’m embarrassed to move at the same time that I’m afraid that I’ll not move soon enough.
I dehydrate myself all the time to get through meetings, and there have been times when I’ve made myself positively ill trying to be dehydrated for days in a row.
So my heart fell in January when I got back to work after the Christmas break and was told that I’d have to take part in a set of workshops that would go on for a full two weeks. I had a couple of months to get used to this idea, and I spent weeks simply dreading what would happen, and planning and re-planning how I would get through the fortnight.
I knew that I couldn’t simply dehydrate myself for two weeks in a row. But I couldn’t drink normally either. And how could I make sure that I sat next to the door? And where would the toilets be? (the workshops were off-site), and would I – horror! – huge humiliation! – have to ask to use an access card each time I needed to run?
In the end I got through the two weeks. I got up early each day so that I could have coffee with enough time for it to go through me before I went to the workshop. During the day I drank as little as possible, and chose to drink hot water instead of cold (cold water – even a small amount – can trigger a sudden desperate need to go). And I was able to sit close to the door, and – thankfully – there were no access cards needed to get to the toilets.
I got through. But I’m pretty much a nervous wreck now. I’m sure I contributed far less to that two-week exercise than I would have done if so much of my attention hadn’t been focussed on how full my bladder was, how long I could last, and whether anyone else was running to the loo as much as me.
Is there anyone else here who dreads getting stuck in a meeting at work? How do you cope? Have you got any tips for making this experience easier?